Owning Sarah [Sequel to Loving Sarah] (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour)

by Julie Shelton

  * * * *

  Sarah, Jesse and Adam stood at baggage carousel number six at the Richmond airport, waiting for the passengers from Boston to begin filtering in from the concourse. Sarah’s two best friends, Cassie O’Rourke and Maggie Shannon, were coming to spend the next two days. The two of them, along with Lisa Wilson and Heather Blanchard, Sarah’s receptionist, were going to help Sarah pick out her wedding dress and their own bridesmaid’s dresses. Sarah hadn’t seen Cassie or Maggie since last year, when the three of them had gotten together for a long weekend in Las Vegas. They’d stayed at the Bellagio and spent all their time shopping, gambling, eating, and catching up after not seeing each other for nearly a year.

  Both women had been at the Boston restaurant the night of Sarah’s very public, very humiliating breakup with Phillip Nugent, and the three had been close ever since.

  “There they are,” Sarah murmured, waggling her fingers in a wave as Cassie came into sight. Cassie O’Rourke, freckle-faced and green-eyed, with a nimbus of curly red hair surrounding her face, was around five feet five and slim. She was dressed in jeans and a purple T-shirt and looked like an Irish sprite. The minute she saw Sarah, she began waving wildly, practically jumping up and down. Maggie Shannon, slightly shorter and plumper, was right behind her, her blonde hair pulled back and held with a wide tortoiseshell clip at her nape. She was dressed more conservatively in black pin-stripe slacks and a cream silk blouse. Her face creased into a smile as soon as she saw Sarah.

  Not waiting for them to come to her, Sarah ran forward, throwing her arms first around Cassie, then around Maggie, talking excitedly, and leaving Adam and Jesse to negotiate their way through the milling crowd to catch up with her. As they approached, she introduced everyone. Cassie hugged both men while Maggie shook their hands. As the two women went all girly and giggly over Sarah’s engagement rings, Adam and Jesse wrangled their bags, then herded them out to the Land Rover. As they left the parking deck, Adam and Jesse were up front and the three women in the back. Adam turned his head. “Anybody hungry?”

  At the chorus of yeses that greeted his question, he pulled into a Ruby Tuesday and they all went inside the popular chain restaurant. After the waitress had taken their drink order, Jesse asked Cassie, “How did you guys meet Sarah?”

  Cassie looked flummoxed. “You mean she never told you? You never told him?” she asked Sarah, who was sitting between her two men on one bench, while Cassie and Maggie sat across from them on the other bench.

  Sarah shook her head, a flush spreading across her face. “I–I couldn’t. It was way too embarrassing.”

  “Embarrassing! It was positively inspirational!” Cassie leaned forward, resting both elbows on the table. “You should’ve seen her, Jesse, she was magnificent.”

  He smiled. “So I keep tellin’ her.”

  “I can’t believe she never told you.”

  “Neither can I,” he said, giving Sarah a pointed look, “so, why don’t you enlighten us?”

  Sarah opened her mouth to protest, closing it the instant she saw one of his eyebrows soar. Oh, Lord. She was so getting spanked for this later.

  “She and that… fiancé of hers”—Cassie said the word fiancé like she was spitting out something vile-tasting—“were having dinner with another couple at the restaurant I work at in Boston’s Little Italy. He’d been there before, and everybody hated to wait on him because he was such a lousy tipper. God, what an obnoxious prick he was, loud, condescending, disparaging the selections on what is actually an exceptional wine list…”

  Cassie’s voice faded as the memories of that awful night welled up inside of Sarah. Memories she’d long suppressed, but was now vividly recalling—the shadowy interior of the small, dimly lit restaurant in the basement of a Boston row house, the mouth-watering aroma of garlic and herbs, the clink of silverware against fine china, the low murmur of conversation, the scrape of wooden chairs across a floor paved with handmade bricks. As Cassie spoke, Sarah relived with excruciating clarity every gut-churning second of that humiliating evening, now nearly three years ago.

  * * * *

  Her relationship with Phillip had been slowly deteriorating for months by the night they met up with some of his friends for dinner at the charming little Italian restaurant. Though he’d made a big show of attending AA meetings, he had never actually stopped drinking. He’d just gotten better at hiding it, making her think he’d stopped drinking.

  Therefore, she was dismayed when he ordered a whiskey sour before dinner. “It’s only one drink, dearest,” he assured her in his most supercilious tone, “don’t be such a party pooper. One little drink never hurt anybody. Besides, the wines they serve here are inferior—they’re not even French, for Christ’s sake. Just cheap Italian table wine.” He flicked his fingers dismissively. “Not worth drinking.” By the time he was on his fourth whiskey sour, he was drunk and loud and obnoxious.

  At that point he decided that a suitable topic of dinner conversation would be Sarah’s refusal to suck his cock before leaving the penthouse that evening. Ignoring her attempts to shut him up, he described the scene in graphic detail, in a voice loud enough for everyone in the cozy little restaurant to overhear. Sarah sat with her head down, mortified and red-faced with humiliation. She wanted to sink through the floor. Bile rose up in the back of her throat, and she was afraid she was going to be sick.

  “I bet you’d suck our waiter’s cock, wouldn’t you?” Phillip leered at her. “You think I haven’t noticed you eyeing that bulge in his pants? You think I don’t know he’s got the hots for you?” Their hapless waiter, having just come out of the kitchen carrying a heavy tray full of food, did an immediate one-eighty and high-tailed it back through the swinging double doors as if he were in a Marx Brothers comedy. He didn’t reemerge.

  Phillip grabbed Sarah’s arm and tried to pull her up off her chair. “Come on, bitch. I want you to make it up to me. I want you on your knees under the table, right here, right now, sucking my cock.”

  For a moment the entire restaurant went silent, as if the room itself were holding its breath, and something finally snapped inside Sarah. Something that told her she had finally had enough of Phillip Nugent. Lifting her head proudly, she rose gracefully to her feet, looking down at him through eyes that were no longer clouded by fear and uncertainty. Eyes that were finally seeing him for the petty, abusive, controlling son of a bitch he really was. How could she have been so stupid to think she could marry him? It was as if she’d had blinders on and they’d just now been ripped off.

  Removing her hated engagement ring, she placed it carefully on the tablecloth in front of him. The ten-carat stone, surrounded by twelve more carats in smaller diamonds, winked up at her in obscene excess. He’d chosen it because, as he said the night he’d given it to her, “it makes a statement.” Yeah. It says, “look at me! I’m gaudy and ostentatious and I have no taste.”

  “Thank you, Phillip,” she said pleasantly, “but I believe I will decline your gracious invitation. Go suck your own cock.”

  Gasps and laughter erupted around the tiny room as Phillip gaped up at her in total shock.

  She bent to pick up her wineglass, lifting it toward him in a mock salute. “Here’s to you, dearest. You have demeaned me for the last time.”

  Inwardly she was quaking at her audacity. Outwardly, she was the picture of poised sophistication. In her copper-colored silk dress with a stylish, black lace bolero jacket, one of the few items remaining in her wardrobe that Phillip hadn’t picked out, and with her mink-brown hair swept up in a smooth twist at the back of her head, she was the epitome of class and breeding, everything Phillip had been telling her for months she was not. Well, screw that.

  “Oh, and one more thing, Phillip, dear. Before you find yourself another woman stupid enough to put up with your drinking and abuse, may I suggest that you at least learn how to fuck properly?”

  More gasps around the room and at least one spit take at the next table, all of which she ig
nored. She turned to the couple who’d joined them for dinner, friends of Phillip’s, who treated her with open disdain. “Do you know,” she went on conversationally, as though she were in a drawing room discussing colors and fabrics for changing the decor, “in the entire time we’ve been together, Phillip has never once given me an orgasm?” She turned back to her fiancé. “You didn’t know that either, did you, Phillip. But of course you didn’t,” she continued smoothly, answering her own question, ignoring the howl of protest coming from his lips, “because you’ve never cared one iota about seeing to my satisfaction. The only orgasms you’re interested in are your own.”

  She clucked her tongue. “Really, dearest,” she chided gently. “You’re such a Neanderthal, and in this day and age, that’s simply unacceptable. No woman wants to have sex without an orgasm. Not even me. I can’t imagine why I put up with it for as long as I did.” She shook her head. “Must be my ignorant hillbilly background, as you so often have had occasion to point out to me.”

  By now, every person in the restaurant was watching and listening with rapt attention, including the entire waitstaff and the bus boys. No one was even pretending to eat or work.

  Recovering from his stupefaction, Phillip looked around nervously. He grabbed her free hand and tugged hard. “Sit down, Sarah,” he hissed loudly. “Goddamn it, you’re making a spectacle of yourself.”

  Feeling her courage beginning to fade, Sarah stiffened her spine and locked her knees, gearing up for the finale. “Don’t worry, Phillip, I’m almost through. Oh, by the way. In case I haven’t made myself clear, the engagement is off. The wedding is off. We are finished. Done. Kaput. It’s. Over.” Her eyes hardened and her lips curved upward in a mirthless smile. “And, since you’ve decided to take up drinking again, I’d like to propose one last toast.” She raised her wineglass.” To you, dearest.” She spat the word. “May you get everything in life you so richly deserve.” Lifting the glass to her lips, she took a tiny sip. Then, in cinematic slow motion, she upended it, dumping the contents, an award-winning Grattamacco Bolgheri, over his head.

  Phillip shrieked and jumped up, sending his chair toppling over with a loud crash! “You stupid bitch!” he cried, frantically dabbing at himself with a napkin, “you just ruined my three-thousand-dollar Saville Row suit! Are you crazy?”

  She laughed. “Sorry, Phillip, I’m afraid the only crazy one around here is you. No sane person would pay three thousand dollars for a suit.” With an air of feigned insouciance, she picked up her purse and walked sedately toward the ladies’ room, somehow managing to make it without crumpling into an ignominious heap.

  As soon as she was inside, however, her shaking legs gave way completely. Gulping down a sob, she sagged back against the door, sliding down it until she was sitting on the floor. She was shaking all over.

  Instantly, Phillip was outside, pounding on it so hard it shook. “Goddamn it, Sarah, you have embarrassed me for the last time, do you hear me? Now, you get your ass back out here and apologize!”

  Apologize! Her mind boggled. He wanted her to apologize? Lord have mercy, he truly was insane.

  “Sarah, if you don’t open this door and get the fuck out here, I swear I’m going to break it down!”

  Oh, God! Terrified, she stretched upward, forcing her stiff fingers to turn the lock, whimpering with relief when she heard the metallic snick as the bolt slid into place. He continued to rain kicks and blows heavy enough to shake the door. Kicks and blows she knew he would be raining on her if he ever got her alone.

  “Damn it, Sarah, I demand that you unlock this door! You are not ending our engagement, do you hear me?” He sounded really, really pissed. “I don’t give a shit what you say. We are getting married as planned. I have no intention of giving up the million dollars your father paid me just because you’re too fucking frigid to have an orgasm!”

  Oh!

  My.

  God!

  Her mouth opened in horror as realization finally dawned. Swept by nausea, she groaned and scrambled to her feet. Somehow she managed to make it into the closest stall before her stomach heaved, emptying its contents, partially in the toilet bowl, partially on the floor, partially on her legs and shoes. Sobbing, she sank to her knees, her head suspended over the bowl as she continued to retch uncontrollably.

  When the heaving finally subsided, she flushed the toilet and sank back on her heels, resting her forehead against the front edge of the porcelain bowl. She couldn’t stop crying. She wished a black hole would just open up beneath her and swallow her up.

  Her humiliation was complete. Her father had paid Phillip Nugent a million dollars to marry her. And everybody in the restaurant knew it. By noon tomorrow, it would be all over town. Because, for all its air of worldly sophistication, when it came down to gossip—the juicier the better—Boston was the quintessential small town. Dimly aware that Phillip’s voice had been joined by other male voices, loud, firm male voices, she started to listen, but they slowly faded away leaving her in silence, except for her sobbing.

  She didn’t know how long she stayed there like that. She didn’t care. But she did know that eventually she’d have to face the restaurant patrons who’d been unwilling witnesses to the spectacle she’d made of herself. Heaving a sigh, she suddenly realized where she was and the condition she was in. On her knees in a toilet stall, partially covered in her own vomit.

  Ugh.

  She heard the key turning in the lock and the door opened, creaking slightly.

  “Miss?” It was a young, tentative female voice, one she’d never heard before.

  “Go away.”

  “It’s okay, miss.” The voice’s owner came in and locked the door behind her. “The owner sent me in here to, um, help you?”

  “I don’t need any help.”

  “Listen, I know what you’re going through. I just broke up with my jerk of a boyfriend, too. Believe me, honey, everyone out in that restaurant is rooting for you.”

  Sarah lifted her head. “Is my—is he still out there?” she asked, unable to bring herself to say Phillip’s name. Her face was burning with shame.

  “No, sweetie, he’s gone.” The voice came closer. “The owner called the cops. They arrested him for creating a disturbance.”

  Sarah nearly choked. “But I’m the one who created the disturbance,” she protested.

  The girl snorted. “I don’t think so,” she said dryly. “Trust me, sweetie. They arrested the right person here.”

  A pair of black nurse’s-type shoes came into Sarah’s peripheral vision beneath the bottom edge of the stall door. “C’mon, sugar,” the voice coaxed gently. “Come on out of there and let me clean you up.” And because Jesse had so often called her “sugar,” Sarah began to cry again, deep gulping sobs, tears streaming down her face as she mourned for everything she’d lost. For everything that had been wrenched from her by her father’s callous interference.

  Not Phillip.

  Jesse.

  His sudden disappearance from her life six years ago had all been her father’s doing, and it had shattered her inside, leaving her hollowed out with grief. A grief that, she now realized, kneeling here in this toilet, had never abated. She’d never gotten over Jesse. She never would get over him. Because when he’d left, he’d taken all her hopes and dreams with him. And these tears were tears of mourning. Not for Phillip. For Jesse.

  She just sat there, clinging to the toilet bowl, waiting for the sharp, tearing pain to end. Waiting for the icy coldness to leave her. But it was never going to leave her. It had become part of her, a frozen pit of inconsolable grief and anguish. A raw, open wound that would never heal no matter how much time passed. If it weren’t for the cold and the constant, howling inner pain, she would’ve realized long ago that she was dead.

  The cubicle door creaked open slowly. “Are you okay?”

  “I stink,” Sarah warned between sobs, angling her head to find herself staring at one of the restaurant’s waitresses, a redheaded, gum-
snapping, freckle-faced woman dressed in the restaurant’s uniform of black pants, long-sleeved white shirt, with a short black apron tied around her waist. She was probably a little younger than Sarah and reminded her of fairies and leprechauns and Maureen O’Hara.

  “I have nearly two dozen nieces and nephews,” the woman said with a commiserating smile. “Believe me, I‘ve smelled worse.” She extended her hand. “Hi. I’m Cassie O’Rourke.”

  “Sarah Marshall.” Sarah took Cassie’s hand and let her help her up. “I’m so embarrassed.”

  “Don’t be.” Taking one look at the devastated Sarah, Cassie led her over to an elegant satin-striped, upholstered love seat that took up most of the free space in the tiny restroom. “Here, sweetie, sit. Take off your shoes and stockings.” While Sarah did that, Cassie retrieved a couple of linen hand towels from the cabinet under the sinks and wet them.

  “I must look like a raccoon,” Sarah murmured apologetically as Cassie gently began washing Sarah’s tear-streaked face, then her legs and feet. She even cleaned her shoes and washed her stockings, drying them under the hand dryer. She reapplied Sarah’s makeup—just a little powder and blush and pale pink lip gloss, the entire time keeping up a steady diatribe against men, what pigs they were and how so not worth it they were. Her wicked comments were so funny Sarah even managed a couple of half-hearted laughs.

  Halfway through the process, Sarah’s cell phone rang. Without a word, Cassie simply withdrew it from Sarah’s small purse, shut it off, and dropped it back inside. When Sarah was once again clean and presentable, Cassie unlocked the door to reveal Mama Bella, the owner’s wife, a portly Italian woman in her late fifties, waiting in the hallway outside.

  She bustled in, arms outstretched, to give Sarah a gigantic hug, expressing in broken English, her despair that such a lovely signorina had been forced to endure such cruel treatment in her restaurant.

  “Santa Maria!” she cried, releasing Sarah abruptly and waving her hands before clasping them to her ample bosom. “He is uno figlio di puttana, that one! Per piacere, bambina, forgive my English.” She shook her fist to the heavens as anger once again overtook her. “Stronzo! He will never be allowed in this ristorante ever again.”